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The New Forest is being stripped of mushrooms as wild food foraging gains popularity. That's according to the Hampshire Fungus Recording Group - which is calling on the Forestry Commission to impose a ban on ALL mushroom picking. They say the popularity is in part due to TV foodies and celebrity chefs.

Mushroom picking for commercial gain is illegal, but the general public are allowed a total of 1.5kg of mushrooms per person, per day. Society member Sara Cadbury said: " All these programmes about the 'wild food' craze and foraging in the forest merely serve to popularise the idea of mushroom picking. Fungus is a central part to the web of life - nearly all plants and trees rely on them for their growth, as do many invertebrates."

Foragers say a blanket ban on picking mushrooms would be a tragedy.
A spokesman for the Forestry Commission said: "We do control and permit events in the New Forest and will direct organised groups to less sensitive sites and discourage them from cutting or picking fungi. By promoting the Fungi Pickers' Code of Conduct we want everyone to have a sensible approach to collecting fungi and only for personal use. We are very aware of the concerns regarding the impacts of unauthorised commercial picking and are working to develop a more robust approach to this in the New Forest, which must be practical and enforceable."

Were you in the Bolderwood Road area of the New Forest on Saturday April 11?

Did you see an altercation between a man and a teenage boy on a skateboard near to the A31 roadbridge?

Police are appealing for witnesses after a 13-year-old boy was assaulted while he was out skateboarding with friends between 11.30am and 12.30pm. The boy was recording his friend as he skateboarded along the road when a man driving a dark-coloured Vauxhall car appeared to try and run the boy off the road.

The boy then shouted and the man stopped his car and approached him. He grabbed the boy before pushing him to the ground and standing on his ankle and foot.

The man then also made the boy delete the footage from his camera before leaving the scene in his car.

The man is described as white, aged about 40, about 6ft 5ins tall and of a large build. He had a long ginger beard and was wearing a hat, jeans and a jacket.

“This was a cowardly assault on a defenceless young boy which has resulted in the victim sustained a broken ankle and chipped on on his foot. The weather was good this day and so the area was likely to have been busy with cyclists, dog walkers and tourists and I would urge anyone with any information or who witnessed the incident to contact me."

New technology, used by speed enforcement officers to concentrate on reducing animal related accidents on the roads, detected 680 speed-related offences in the New Forest during October.

The majority of these drivers, who were caught in the first month of the project, will be offered a place on a speed awareness course.

The Hampshire Constabulary speeding officers targeted evening commuting times when the greatest number of animals are injured, and used infra-red camera technology to detect speeding offences at night.

Hampshire Constabulary Road Safety Sergeant, Rob Heard, said:

The results for October highlight the importance of this partnership approach to reducing speed in the New Forest. They show we are targeting the right areas and that people are speeding through the New Forest.

We sincerely hope our enforcement will remind drivers of the importance of keeping within the speed limit at all times of the day and hope that it will contribute to a reduction in speed and a reduction in the number of injuries to both people and animals.

– Rob Heard

This project is a partnership between the Verderers of the New Forest, The Commoners Defence Association, and Hampshire Constabulary.